In that thread, it did not appear that the differences - measurable as they are - between the MSAHCI driver and the Intel IASTOR AHCI driver - are significant enough to get your panties in a bunch over a driver-swap.įor instance, a 20 MB/s difference for a spec-rated 500 MB/s SSD is insignificant. While I'm not planning to go through the hoops Fernando says are necessary to review the data on the driver comparisons, I've reviewed the old thread from last year in which such comparisons were posted. I'm going to post this as a 'double' or sequential post to the one that precedes, instead of simply revising the latter. We'll just have to 'wait and see.' On the sig-rig, I'd already had the IRST installed, and I uninstalled it after switching over to MSAHCI. And that leaves me with the other factors I mentioned about the extra systray item, the dialogs and so forth. a computer which actually has 'daily use' - it's a matter of convenience or when I want to take time to install the IRST software and make the driver changeover. So for the 2700K system with the Gen3 motherboard, latest BIOS etc. I could easily test the look and feel of the IRST on the second rig.įor the PCI-E cards, the ones I'd bought were promoted with the idea of using the native MSAHCI, and obviously there's not IRST option for a Marvell chip.

For the sig-rig, an update in the IRST software actually required a BIOS update. I DO think I'd need to update the BIOS for my sig-rig, while the twin system is the later-gen Z68 board with the very last BIOS. So it boils down to just how much performance improvement I can expect, or whether it's worth it. At that point, the MSAHCI route seems simpler. With MSAHCI, I don't have the extra systray item the safe-removal feature coincides with the safe-removal icon also serving USB devices. You tell me that I'd now have the same hot-swap answer to 'Safe Removal,' but through the IRST systray, dialogs and options. Well, here's a choice I would face in reverting to IRST over the native MS drivers.

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